lovell



(No Model.) W. C. LOVBLL.

y Account Book.

No. 236,602. Patented Jan. 11,1881.

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UNITED STATES WILLIAM C. LOVELL, OF NEW YORK, N. Y.

ACCOUNT-BOOK.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 236,602, dated January 11, 1881.

Application led April 1G, 1880.

To all 'whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLlAM CHARLES LOVELL, a citizen of the United States, and of the city, county, and State of New York, have invented a new and useful Method of Keeping Accounts, of which the following is a specification.

Figure l represents a' plan showing my portable pocket cash and bill book opened out flat, with one of the sectional covers thrown open. Fig. 2 is a perspective View of the same. Fig. 3 is an enlarged sectional view of a part of the same.

Similar letters of reference indicate corresponding parts.

Heretofore in cities as well as in country towns it has been customary for dealers and consumers to run a Weekly account with butchers, grocers, Snc., and it frequently happens that a customer calls in a hurry and asks for his account, and is unable to obtain the same at once, owing to the storekeeperv not having his books posted fully to date, and is asked, with great inconvenience, to Wait or call again; and to obviate all these difficulties and annoyances I provide a means whereby the storekeeper can carry his accounts in his pocket in such shape that he can immediately7 hand a complete bill of items to the customer, as hereinafter fully described.

This invention consists in a combined cash and bill book whose pages are temporarily bound in alphabetical sections of a folding The said pages, forming bill-blanks with coupons, are designed to contain a complete bill of items purchased and arranged in the form of a bill, and upon settlement of the account the sums of items contained on the page are added up, the page is then torn out and handed to the customer as a receipted bill, and a tally of the account, showing the date it was opened and closed, together with the total sum of the bill, is preserved on the coupon from which the bill was torn, and this stub remains as evidence that the bill has been settled.

In the case here presented I have, for convenience, divided the alphabet into four parts, and marked the consecutive letters on the wer-aps A, B, C, and D. Covered by each l (No model.)

of the said aps, and attached to the stiff bodyT sections of the folding cover, I have a pad of blank bill-heads, E E E E", temporarily bound lengthwise with the folds, like the leaves of a book, by four (more or less) metal paper-fastenings, C.l These bill-heads are all perforated, as shown in dotted lines, Figs. l and 2, at aa, and have each a coupon, G, at the bottom.

The operation is as follows: Supposing Mr. Clark opens an account, his nameis placed on the bill-head E, because that section contains the letter C, and is also placed on the coupon G at the bottom of the page, together with the date he opened his account. Non the goods he orders during the week are all set down on the bill-page, with the price. By this means his whole account is kept on one page, which can be added up in a moment, torn out, and handed as a receipted bill, when called for, and the coupon, which remains intact, contains all that is of interest to the storekeeper, which is a statement of the name of the customer, when the account was opened and when closed, together with the total amount.

It Will here be observed that in no case is the bill or account to be detached from the book or coupon until fully settled, and the fact of the bill not beingin the book and the coupon remaininglnoves positively that the account must have been settled 5 and, furthermore, there being no longer a detail account of such party in the book, there cannot possibly be a mistake made of asking a second time for the bill.

Having thus described my in ventiou, WhatI cla-im as new, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

In a combined pocket cash and bill book, the bill-pages E, with perforations a a and coupon G at the base, arranged in alphabetical sections, each provided with a flap-cover, and the whole with a stiff sectional folding back, 4in the manner and for the use and purpose substantially as herein set forth, shown, and described.

WILLIAM CHARLES LOVELL.

Witnesses CHARLES H. NASH, WILLIAM H. LnWrs. 

